Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

After an hour of coaxing he lifted her to the ground. She leaned against him, trembling. A run of blood appeared at her teeth where she had chewed her upper lip. He didn’t want to touch her after that, though he’d paid twenty-five dollars up front and he’d been waiting for months for a girl, saved up all his extra money. He hadn’t had a woman since Dancesca, back in the good days, the best of days. When the girl was gone — when she left the tunnel and was far away, back on the streets — he crawled along and put his nose close to the beam and sniffed the catwalk and breathed her in and she smelled good.

* * *

The warmth of the library on 42nd Street and the vast staircases and the many-bulbed chandeliers and the strangeness of electric light and the pleasure of a shit over porcelain in the second-floor bathroom, though the toilet paper is cheap and a little rough to the touch. At the basin, Treefrog lets the hot water cleanse his hands and face. He feels good walking through the corridors, past the showcases of books and into the study rooms, sometimes closing his eyes just for practice, never bumping into people. Books everywhere, fabulous books, even engineering journals, which he sometimes steals, but it’s too cold today to think of acquisitions.

Instead, Treefrog makes his way to the third floor, where he fills in a slip for a tunnel-building book — he knows the author and call number by heart. He waits in the long pew until the number flashes on the screen above his head.

“Thank you, friend,” he says to the young man who hands him the book.

The third floor is always warmest. He takes a seat in the center of the giant reading room, opens the book, but doesn’t read it, just leans back in his chair, warms his hands under the table lamp, and stares up at the fabulous universe of the ceiling, the faded clouds, the cherubs, the flowers, the vines, the rosettes, the acanthus leaves. He takes off his blue wool cap, lets his hair fall around him, counts the panels in the ceiling, their perfect symmetry. Great men must have put together the ceiling once, carving the intricacies, using tiny scalpels to add the twists to the cornices, chiseling form out of wood with slow and brutal patience, using the mathematic skill in their hands to animate their work. He tells himself that he would like to make a map of the ceiling, re-create it on graph paper.

An Asian girl, too polite to move away from the opposite side of the desk, looks up when he takes off his coat. He knows that he smells and he wants to tell the girl, I have my pride, Sister Asia.

He shuffles in the puddle of melt at his feet, looking furtively at her from under his hair.

Treefrog has seen men in the library take out their penises and flail them beneath the table — not homeless men, either — fumbling first with their flies and then delicately letting their members flop out. They look down as if they’re about to speak into a microphone and then they change their gaze, stare intently into books as they begin to stroke themselves, so adept that the rest of their bodies hardly even quake. Once he saw a businessman licking semen off his hand — he caught Treefrog’s eye as he licked and grinned. Treefrog had a pair of scissors in his pocket. He fingered it gently, held it up, and the businessman scurried out of the library.

He clamps his arms down and closes tight on his armpits to trap the scent of his body, puts his hands between his knees. Sister Asia is so lovely: her blue blouse is buttoned high and her spectacles are gold and her eyes are brown and she has a full red mouth with a glisten of Vaseline over dry lips. He lifts his head and smiles at her, but she stares into her book, adjusts her eyeglasses on her nose. Perhaps she caught a whiff of him when he leaned across.

Maybe he should pay a visit to the welfare hotel off Riverside, just breeze his way up the stairs to the bathroom. Scrub himself down to nothing, maybe even shave his long beard, then slash at his reflection in the mirror: black man white man red man brown man American.

* * *

His laces open, his feet unswelling in the shoes, the gloves relaxing around his fingers, his hat not quite so tight around his head.

* * *

Down the stairs and out through the revolving door, opening his overcoat to show the security guard that he has no books. He feels the weight of a spud wrench in his pocket.

It’s dark now and Treefrog huddles under the portico, counting out his money. Eighteen dollars forty-seven cents, and he drops one of the pennies to the snow to make the total an even forty-six. He walks down the steps and sticks out his gloved hands to capture a few snowflakes. One of these days the snow will stop and he will be able to sell some of his books up on Broadway, make a few dollars, perhaps enough for a little more ganja from Faraday to see himself through.

Past the statues of the lions, hooded with white, along Fifth Avenue onto 42nd Street, into Bryant Park.

Some poor bum is lying under a green bench, not even shivering; maybe he’s dead. The moon up above him like the face of a bloated drunk. Treefrog hunkers down beside the man. “Heyyo,” he whispers loudly. Not a stir. “Heyyo.” He lifts up the end of the blanket and begins to unlace the man’s shoes. Leather, and no holes either. Pity they aren’t a size nine. The shoe comes off easily, and the man just rolls a little on his side. All the topside bums are stupid enough to keep their money under the insoles of their shoes. Treefrog lifts up the sweaty flap. Goddamn, just five dollars. He puts it to his nose and smells. Enough for another small bottle. Robin Treefrog Hood. Steal from the poor to give to the poor to give to the liver.

He leaves the shoe half dangling on the bum’s foot. At the edge of the park he throws three pebbles at the man, hits him with the third, wakes him. The man jumps up and looks around, but Treefrog disappears behind the bushes and hops over the wall. Just wake the poor fool so that he doesn’t get his feet frostbitten. Sorry, brother. Won’t do it again. That’s a promise. But there was probably twenty dollars in the other shoe anyway.

Out of Bryant Park. Along toward the Times Square subway. Down the iced piss-slick steps of the station. He vaults the turnstile. Why pay to enter the corridors of your own house?

* * *

Lifting the edge of his wool cap and folding it an inch above his ears, he shuffles on the platform among the commuters; they are swollen with shopping bags. Treefrog watches as an old woman sniffs at the air and tightens her grip on her handbag. She has gray hair, dark skin, muck-brown eyes. The bones in her face look like they could rattle. Her coat is thin at the elbows. Clutching the handbag, her fingers are long and slender and worked. She sniffs the air again, her lips trembling slightly, and her hand tightens its hold on her purse. He has seen this happen often enough to let it slide by. But there is something about her: the coat, the eyes, the fingers. And all at once he would like to reach out to her. He would like to say, Please. He would like to tell her something very ordinary. Treefrog reaches into his pocket, and his fingers crumple the stolen five-dollar bill. The old lady flicks another quick look at him, and then she puts the sleeve of her coat to her nose. She flips the handbag around to the other side of her body. He breathes hard. Begins to rock, ever so minutely. His knees bend, buckle, unbuckle. She looks again. She takes one step. He wants to say, No. She takes another step. He stops his rocking, watches her. She tries to be nonchalant as she steps away, but her movement is flagrant. He says aloud, “Please.” She pretends she doesn’t hear him. He says again, “Please.” She moves out of sight, is swallowed behind pillars. He closes his eyes. When the train is gone, Treefrog remains alone on the platform. He opens his eyes, tightens his fist on the five-dollar bill, and then walks up the stairs in the solitary abandonment of rush hour. From warmth to cold, he thinks, cold to warmth.